Grounding lights on basket

Fly

Fly

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Jul 24, 2011
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When I bought my roof basket, it had a CB antenna mount, which was grounded straight on the basket.

Can I ground my lights on the basket too, or do I absolutely need to run the wires back to a ground in the engine bay (or to the battery)? It's aluminium. Grounding them straight to bare metal should be fairly easy, I'm just wondering if that'd work...

Thanks!
 
Nevermind. Reading on the interwebs, seems like it's a bit much to ground on the basket and I'm better running it back to the engine bay.
 
Earths are a tricky one, it only needs a slightly loose or corroded connection to have a major impact. You could ground on the basket, as long you you run a decent gauge wire from the basket to the chassis.

There's no need to run a ground to the battery. There are ground wires all over the car, all you need to do is find a suitable one & add another (quality) ring crimp connection to it (again using a decent gauge wire). Whatever you do, dont splice earth wires, its a terribly unreliable connection...unless soldered. But then it would probably be easier crimping a new connection.
 
duly noted. I'll keep that in mind.

On a sidenote: anyone knows the name of that kind of plug? I got these from an auto place with my lights, but they had no label and the place is closed for the holidays. But I'm trying to get my stuff wired for thursday...

The male side is already wired, so I just soldered it to my existing wires, but the female side isnt and I have no idea how it's supposed to go. I'm using these plugs so I can easily remove the lights with the basket for daily-driving, and just plug it back when I head to the backcountry.

1355780800-plug.jpg
 
Ahh yes, looks like it.

The reason it seemed weird is that I got only the connectors, not the matching crimps... I'll swing by my NAPA store to get some.

Thanks!
 
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